i'm going to be discussing all of that with these two. there they are. one of the world's top experts on water security who says time is running out for billions of people. and the other is an earth and planetary scientist and a specialist on the crisis facing egypt, where the world's longest river is under existential threat. also on the show — one of the big bosses at the world's biggest player in cloud computing. she tells us what it means to be water positive. in fact, her company generates most of the profits of amazon. of course, one of the world's top five companies. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world. once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. you know, this week we're looking at global water security. it's essential, of course, to almost everything we do. we can't live without it. but every day we use ten billion tonnes of fresh water. or how about this?

that's enough to fill an olympic swimming pool two and a half million times. now, we're not short of water, but the vast majority is ocean saltwater. and less than 100th of 1% is carried in lakes and rivers. you know, there is enough for all of us, but we don't all enjoy equal access. so what are the consequences for societies facing water scarcity? it depends on what else is happening. what other pressures are on, what other stressors are there. but water scarcity, which we could translate as drought, for example, will lead to famine, it will lead to migrations, it will lead to warfare, all sorts of things. so water scarcity is just the beginning of a long list of things that could end in societal collapse. well, there's a stark warning. you know, around the world today, one in four of the world's population lives in a region facing extremely high water stress.

it means they regularly use up almost their entire available water supply. so let's take a look at those countries. here they are, 25 of them. they include india, the world's most populous country. european nations such as greece and belgium and egypt, where the nile is under serious threat. and we're going to hear more from egypt very shortly. but even here in the uk, the environment agency says seven english regions are expected to experience severe water stress by 2030. and meanwhile, the country's biggest water company, thames water, it's been under fire for years for mismanagement of water and waste water. now, my first guest is one of the world's top water security experts. he's led the us defence department's task force on critical infrastructure, including water, and invented a product that draws potable water from the atmosphere. david stuckenberg, great to have you on the show. and david, let me start with this, because back in 2022, you said this and i quote, "the earth's fresh water supplies are running

out of time." so, david, let's start with that. just how worrying is this picture? it's impossible to overstate the importance of our fresh water supply here on earth in terms of commerce and life. water is the economic potential energy of a nation. and since antiquity, humans have always counted on the water supply on the ground lakes, rivers, aquifers, streams. and yet those sources are running out. so it's important because of the amount of fresh water that we have available to us as humanity, approximately one quarter of a percent outside of the icecaps, that we begin looking at intelligent ways to not only utilise water, but how to get more water available to us. and david, we know that much of the world is already experiencing water scarcity. so what does that actually mean for some of those regions in practice?

it has a very practical impact, a very tangible impact. for example, in the united states, what we see here in what we would call the breadbasket of the world, where we grow food for more than an estimated 100 countries, our largest aquifer in the central plains of the united states is estimated to be running out. this is potentially an existential issue, and it will change how farming and ranching is done across the great plains. it will change the contours of american life because if you think about it, these areas used to be dusty deserts and now they're fruitful plains of food and allowed to be so because of the water we bring up from great depths. but that water is going, going and soon to be gone. you have a military background as a us air force pilot. you've seen conflict first—hand. so, david, i'm kind of wondering, are you concerned that competition for water could actually lead

to new wars and if so, where? i think there's great risk of conflict over water. it has been so since certainly all periods in history. the great civilisations of yesteryear have been built on water supplies and have been destroyed based on the viability of those water supplies. certainly where we are right now around the world is that the water supplies are becoming more constricted. and as that happens, there are elements that are wrestling for control and certainly this is true even in south america, where elements are coming in and beginning to control. cartels for instance, the water supply, which you have to have for commerce and life without water in three days, you cease. and so this is very alarming. and certainly it is predicted that conflicts will arise over water.

we see here in the united states water systems being aggressed. we see both state and non—state actors attacking our water systems because they are generally some of the less defended aspects of our infrastructure. david, how did we get to this point? because i'm wondering, is it overpopulation or misuse, climate change perhaps or or a combination of everything? because, again, i'm wondering, how did we get here in the first place? there are a confluence of factors that are contributing to the change in our water supply, its availability, and that is certainly population growth. there's a heavier demand on the water we use. on top of that, you have conditions globally that are changing where water is available. a lot of the water that we use was laid down after the last ice age and it took hundreds and even thousands of years to go down into the ground. and now we're withdrawing it

at a rate that is far faster than it was actually deposited. so this is creating a scenario where like a bank account that is running empty, both the principal and the interest have been drawn off and now somebody�*s going to have to pay the bill. how we pay the bill, i think, is very much the question of our time. who are the biggest uses of water in terms of industry? and what can they well, what can they do to actually manage down their dependence on water? in most countries, around 40% of the water is used for agriculture. that's to grow the food we need and certainly take care of the textiles that we need to clothe ourselves. but also there's a heavy demand on water from energy and there is a reason we call water, food and energy annexes. these three really cannot be decoupled. in order to create energy, you need water.

and in order to create water, you need energy. food, you need both water and energy. and so we have to look at these three things as rings that again, can't be looked at individually. if you think about it, the paradigm that we are using is to draw out the water from the ground, to use the water in lakes, rivers and streams. that is a finite source. we have a tremendously vast amount of water on the right side of the what we call the water cycle. that's the slow side. and it takes hundreds of years to recharge an aquifer. but we also have a fast side of the water cycle. that's the water available to us in the air. it's estimated to be 37 quadrillion tonnes, which is enough to water the entire planet surface every week with one inch of water. so what does this mean? well, it means that we have a side of the water cycle that is completely recharged every nine days.

today technologies are emerging that allow us to capture the fast side of the water cycle, the water in the air, and do something called renewable water from air. and david, you've described much of our infrastructure as based on roman technology, and you've argued that it's just time to move on from that. what does that actually mean? there's a lot of speculation about that, but certainly my focus for almost the last decade has been to understand what makes sense in terms of second and third order effects for a new model to look like. and i believe that it's a very distributed system that involves what we would call water at the edge, or much like computing at the edge, creating water where and when it is needed. and that would involve using water from the atmosphere. again, that changes over completely every nine days, 37 quadrillion tonnes of it to make the water where and when it is needed. and the technologies to do this are now available. it is clear that some areas

of the world enjoy an abundance of water more than others. so, david, do they have a responsibility to other countries in some cases, not least their neighbours? i think we all have a responsibility towards our water supply. i think it should be thought of as a global commons. we think of it as a free commodity, something that is not to toil too much over because there's no cost to it. i would posit that the age of free water has come to an end. and david, let me end on this — on a personal level, because i'm kind of wondering, how did you become so passionate about water supply? as a national security professional one of myjobs has always been to look in the folds and in the gaps and to try to find the things that are outsized challenges in terms of national security that we're not thinking about. and when you look at water,

that certainly qualifies as the number one, if not the most critical national security risk on the globe to global stability. this is an asset that without water in three days, your whole entire economy and all life ceases. i can't think of a greater concern for a nation than making sure that its water supply is secure and safe. well, on that point, dr david stuckenberg, water security expert and co—founder of genesis systems, really appreciate your time. thanks for talking to us. thank you. ok, let's now turn to egypt, the river nile. it's the world's longest river and civilisations have lived alongside it for thousands of years. but egypt, it's now one of those countries facing extreme water stress. here's our correspondent in cairo. the united nations has warned that egypt could run out of water soon. growing population, climate change

and the dam built by ethiopia on the river nile could be main reasons for the water crisis in the north african country. egypt relies on the nile river to cover 95% of its current consumption, with 55 billion cubic metres annually. with an increasing urbanisation, a booming agricultural sector, a limited amount of nile water and rainfall and high temperature. the demand for water is constantly on the rise in the semi—arid country. to meet these challenges, egypt has launched projects to improve water management, rationalise consumption and increase its desalination capacity. abdel basset hassan, bbc news, cairo. ok, so lots to discuss that with my next guest. he's an earth and planetary scientist at the university of southern california. he's also written several papers on water stress in egypt. essam heggy, a real pleasure having you on the show. essam, we'vejust been hearing

about egypt and the country has this growing population. in fact, there could be 50 million more people by 2050. and the vast majority of them live within walking distance from the the nile river. so just tell us just tell us how important is that river to egyptian life? well, the nile is egyptian life. historically, it's the main source of water that controls the seasons, the agriculture, the customs, the traditions, the food, everything. so egypt, unlike many other nations who are on the borders of the nile, rely completely on that source of water. one of the most important things also to look at that egypt is a hyper arid environment, so it's a very dry place. and so it does not receive precipitation, receive precipitation. but essam, it is suffering, isn't it? i mean, yes, it's the world's longest river, but it's facing huge threats. can you just outline what those threats are?

the first threat, i would quantify it as the pollution. we have to think of the nile, it's really it is the longest river on earth, but its flow amount is not that high. it's really a fraction of the amazon and fraction of the mississippi river. so because its flow rate is so low, it gets contaminated very easily because there is not enough flow to flush the contaminant through the sea. it's also the only river on the planet that goes across five climatic zones from the equatorial areas of the earth, which are very wet to the hyper arid area, which are very dry, and to many climates in between. so it's vulnerability to climate change is absolutely high. and the third element, which is very important, which is the damming on the nile. today we have an increasing damming upstream of the nile, which cause a lot of challenges to the downstream nation.

essam, the nile runs through along the border of of something like ten other african countries before it reaches egypt. and one of those countries is ethiopia. so i want to talk to you or ask you about ethiopia's grand renaissance dam, because i'm kind of wondering, will that affect the flow of the river and could it actually impact the availability of fresh water? the dam is still under construction, so no impact has been observed downstream. however, that does not mean that these dams are transparent. that does not mean that these dams are not... they have a threat. and that also does not mean that these dams are very important for ethiopia, because it will generate electricity that that is overdue and and needed that is overdue and needed for ethiopia and for the neighbouring nation around ethiopia. so these dams, they are not in their presence themselves. they are not even.

because the nile passes through so many other countries before it gets to egypt. i'm kind of wondering, does that does that make it harder for egypt to maintain the health of the nile? so that's a good question. so first, egypt cannot be alone responsible for the nile health orfor i mean, egypt does not own the nile or does not control the nile. the nile is controlled by many nations. and in fact, the heaviest pollution of the line is in egypt. but africa can learn from the mistakes that was done in egypt and improve the protection of the nile collectively. so i believe that a healthy mind is good for ethiopia, for sudan, for egypt, for all the nations on the nile. it's not onlyjust good for egypt let me end on this — in ten years�* time, are you more worried or do you have hope that the nile will continue to be a healthy source of clean water for egypt? so i'm a space scientist and space scientist are optimistic. i mean, by every standard, everything we do in space research could be seen impossible

by the others, like walking on the moon or sending satellites. but when it comes to the nile, i am not optimistic. and because the issues associated with climate change and water research in africa have been always perceived as a charity programme. they have never been a science and technology endeavour like water exploration on mars. if we don't put resources into water research and climate research urgently in africa, but we put it as a science and technology, not as a charity programme, i think this programme, this this problem will become worse in the upcoming yea rs. well, on that point, dr essam heggy earth and planetary scientist at the university of southern california, great to have you on the show. thanks for your time. we'll talk to you soon. thank you very much.

now to ourfinal guest who runs a business that delivers cloud services. and no, i'm not talking about rain clouds. i'm talking about data storage and ai computing. but these services, they do use a vast amount of water in their day to day operations. it's the most profitable wing of amazon, of course, one of the world's biggest companies. and full disclosure here, the day before this interview, silly old me busted my ankle on the tennis court. so not to disappoint, i sent my producer david to interview one of the big bosses at amazon web services. on this week's talking business, we're looking at global water security and looking at that resource. that's something you need in your own business model for cooling your data centres. how confident are you in your access to water where you need it? we recognise water is a really scarce resource and so we've actually made a commitment to being water positive by 2030. and what that means is that we will give back as much water to the communities and the environment as we take out primarily through recycling water, reusing water and improving efficiency of water usage. efficiency of water usage

in our data centres. i'm thinking particularly about some of the regions that you oversee europe, middle east and africa, and and two of those territories in particular, water scarcity is a really acute issue. so how do you do that? how do you mitigate your impact on that precious resource? amazon was a founder of the climate pledge and we've got almost like a50 signatories across 38 countries on the climate pledge. and it's primarily about getting to net zero carbon by 2030, 2040, excuse me. so what we do with water is exactly the same, our commitment to water positive means that we work with communities around the world in all the all the countries that we operate our data centers in to make sure our data centers are operating with the most efficiency, that we're reusing the water, we recycle the water, and we have a bunch of replenishment projects actually with local communities as well. now, you've been the market leader in your sector for a decade. you've got major competitors, microsoft and google. google sales grew faster last year. is there something that held you back during that period? in our 01 earnings call, it was year over year growth was i7% in 01,

and we stay super committed to our customers. i think that's where we are entirely focused on, by the way, and we've got almost 100,000 customers now that are using just our ai and ml services today and probably have the most experience when it comes to ai. we have been working with al for 25 years from the beginnings of amazon.com. and one of the things we always say is there's no compression algorithm for experience. a lot of our viewers will be looking at al. it's something they really considered over the last year or two years. you've mentioned it's a 25 year trend line through which you've been working. so let me put this to you. how was ai changed as a as a function of your business model in that time? we did some research recently that would show that european businesses broadly have increased their uptake of ai by almost 32%. and the reasons for that are very important. one is revenue growth. so 64% of businesses say they've seen revenue growth increases and nine out of ten talk about efficiency and automation benefits

that they're receiving. if you add up that kind of uptake and if we continue that uptake, which i'm confident, given the experimentation that we're seeing and the technologies that we're seeing launch, then that could unlock for europe something like 600 euros billion of economic value by 2030. and let's have a look at security. we saw last year how a major data breach affected thousands of organisations. how hard is it to keep your customers data safe? security is job one for us. everything we do, every product that we launch, we ensure that we have enterprise grade security built in. our customers have full control of their data in all of the regions that we operate around the world, they control access. they control where they store it, they control how they manage it

and they control how they encrypt it. and it's very important for us that we both educate them and we work closely with them to ensure data security. the eu's new artificial intelligence act is to regulate the industry. are you concerned about the impact of regulation on innovation or are you optimistic? we are optimistic about working with regulators around the world to create an innovation and experimentation friendly regulatory environment. but it also is very important for us to recognise citizens rights and trust. and so we're absolutely committed to ensuring responsible ai services are delivered and working closely with regulators, whether it's in europe by the way, or globally. actually, it's very good to see europe having their ai act and committed to safe use of ai. another question about europe, europe traditionally lags behind the us in digital skills and in productivity. what can europeans learn from the us? i'm so glad you brought the topic of skills up because going back to that $600 billion opportunity i spoke about in terms of what europe could unlock with al, the biggest blocker that we see in that transformation is actually

digital skills gap. so only as an example, only 13% of uk businesses can actually access the right skill set that they require. and 60% plus of organisations in this report say they cannot access the skills. a third say they're hindering them right in terms of their growth. we have been very committed to skills from the very beginning, training and reskilling, and we made a commitment to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to train 29 million people for free by 2025. your business model, cloud computing and storage needs a huge amount of energy to operate, the international energy agency said the industry is heading towards a thousand terawatt hours by 2026. how confident are you in your energy security? amazon are the founders of the climate pledge. the climate pledge has over a50 signatories across 38 countries committed to a net zero carbon world by 2040. in addition, i will say to you that we are committed

to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. and what that means to make it real is if you move a workload from a average european data center to one of ours by 2025, when we are at 100% renewable energy, you can reduce carbon emissions by 96% on that workload. and by the way, we're already up to 80%. so when i get asked questions about how to be more sustainable, i always say move to the cloud because the cloud is very sustainable. in addition, we are the biggest buyers of renewable energy around the world and we are commissioning wind and solar projects as well. and let me close with this — tanuja, when you look ahead in this fast moving industry, what are the biggest developments, shocks even you expect to see in your marketplace? david, we're living in times of such unprecedented change that the world has never seen.

we're literally at the start of the race. this is a marathon and we're literally at the start. i think we will see some incredible innovation from startups, large businesses, as well as small businesses. and we're very excited about what the future holds and our ability to reinvent the future with our customers. managing director of amazon web services, europe, middle east and africa. thank you so much for your time and i hope you enjoy the show. thank you. well, a massive thank you to my producer, david wardell, for saving my bacon. well, that's it for this week. i hope you enjoyed the show. don't forget — you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or smartphone app. of course you can also follow me on x. i'll by you back. you can get me a bbc, aaron. thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye bye. hello there. there were some warm weather around on saturday. top temperatures of 22 celsius in the south east, but we'll start to see some changes for the second half of the bank holiday weekend with sunny spells and thundery downpours moving in, all thanks

to low pressure close by. as we head into sunday, these weather fronts will be pushing their way northwards, bringing outbreaks of rain, the odd heavier burst as it pushes northwards. but as we head into the latter parts of the morning, into the afternoon, sunshine will appear pretty widely for england, wales and northern ireland and that'll set off some heavy and thundery downpours at times. further north, we'll continue to see some showery rain with a bit of sunshine across northern scotland, but that will impact the temperatures — not quite as warm as saturday, highs of 16 to 19 degrees. as we head through sunday night, though, showers and thunderstorms rattle on for a while into the evening before fading out for england and wales with clear skies here, but further cloud, patchy rain likely across the northern half of the country and temperatures range from around 9 to 11 degrees. so into our bank holiday monday, it looks like that weather front continues to push northwards. so that's where we're going to see some of the heaviest of the showers across the north and east of scotland. we'll start off with some sunshine around, but again, showers will develop and pretty

much anywhere could catch a heavy maybe thundery shower. but the focus of them will be across northern and east of scotland and maybe northeast england. maybe later in the day, something a bit drier and brighter pushing into western areas. but temperatures a few degrees down, still 15 to 17 degrees, still quite pleasant in any sunshine. as we head into tuesday, low pressure starts to move in off the atlantic. starts fine across scotland, northern england, the sunshine begins to fade as cloud breeze rain starts to push up from the south and the west. there'll be mainly patchy in nature, but conditions will go downhill through the day, though i think the northeast of scotland and the northern isles should largely escape and stay dry until after dark. and temperature wise again, the mid to high teens. low pressure is with us then as we move through the middle part of the upcoming week. but then the signs of it moving away in this area of high pressure wants to topple in from the west, so that should slowly settle things down, i think, towards the end of the week and as we head into next weekend, increasing dry weather with some sunshine so should start to feel

a touch warmer, too.

live from washington. this is bbc news russia bombs a superstore in ukraine's second city of kharkiv — killing at least six people. a massive fire breaks out at an games arcade park in india, killing dozens. in the uk — party leaders hit the campaign trail in the general election — amid a growing exodus of conservative mps. ukraine's president, volodymyr zelensky, says a deadly air strike on a crowded superstore is an act of �*russian madness�*. officials say at least six people were killed and more than thirty others injudred on saturday, when two glide bombs struck the d—i—y store in ukraine�*s second city,

kharkiv. an air raid warning sounded moments before explosions tore through the building, starting an intense fire. the ukrainian leader again urged western allies to send more air defences to ukraine. ukraine�*s military says the two glide bombs that hit kharkiv were among a0 that russia dropped on ukrainian army positions and civil infrastructure saturday. the ukrainian military says russian forces are continuing their offensive in the kharkiv region, with six attacks repelled by the ukrainian military. the bbc�*sjeremy bowen is in kharkiv — i spoke to him a short while ago. very good to have you with us. this air strike took place on a crowded super store there in ukraine�*s second—largest city, what more can you tell us? it�*s the weekend, a pretty nice day and people were buying stuff for their gardens or to do a bit of work

around the houses and the shop was full.